Bogdan Vernescu was appointed to the position of vice provost for research in 2016, with the goal of enhancing faculty research efforts and increasing support for research at WPI from government agencies, corporations, and foundations. His responsibilities include supervising the operation and non-financial support of WPI’s research enterprise, including oversight of university-wide research institutes and centers, and the offices that administer research sponsorship and intellectual property and innovation. His own research interests include partial differential equations, homogenization, calculus of variations, and fluid/solid mechanics.

Vernescu originally joined WPI in 1991 as a faculty member in the Mathematical Sciences department, where he co-founded the Center for Industrial Mathematics and Statistics in 1997, and subsequently served as department head from 2003 to 2013.

Before arriving at WPI, Vernescu was a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy. He also held visiting positions at MIT, the University of Metz, University of Nancy, University of Savoie, University of Rouen, and the University of Rome, La Sapienza. He earned BS and MS degrees in applied mathematics from the University of Bucharest, and a PhD in mathematics from the Institute of Mathematics in Romania.